Sasha blinked and began to leaf through the pages. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Undocumented meetings with foreigners. Purchasing extravagant gifts for yourself with Party funds. And my, the time you spend during work hours tending to personal projects, such as scheming and conniving with known enemies of the Party. Which, after all, Terzian is.”
Sasha leafed through the sheets, the pages rippling in his hands. “None of this will matter, not once the Flame has—All of it can be explained—”
“What? You think to use magic to stop an investigation? Your magic means nothing now. Not if the Politburo seizes you first.”
Sasha snatched up the folder, gripped it with both fists, and attempted to tear through the folder’s spine. Zerena let him try for a minute, but it was too thick for him to make much progress.
“That’s only a copy, naturally,” she said smoothly. “The original has already been sent back to Moscow.”
“Very well. I suppose you had one of my lackluster officers informing for you.” Sasha tossed the folder back onto the desk. “But if you think these charges will hold, you’re an even bigger fool than I thought.”
Zerena drummed her painted nails against the manila folder. “The Politburo is not so easy to play—”
“Everyone is easy to play.” Sasha beamed. “They dance on my strings, not the other way around. They will quickly see what a misunderstanding this is—that it is, in fact, you and your husband who have truly betrayed our glorious ideals.”
“Leave him out of this—”
“Why should I?” Sasha stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Hmm? Why should I? Maybe I’ll take the ambassadorship for myself. Run you and your little invalid out into the streets. There is nothing you can maneuver yourself into from which I cannot depose you. Prague is mine. An elemental shall be mine. And the Flame—it, too, will be mine, and I will watch you burn like the heinous witch you are.”
The dark thing inside Zerena slithered through all her hollow places, coiled around her bones. She had been trembling, a moment before, but suddenly a great and heavy calm settled over her. She felt clad in iron. Sashenka was right. There was only one possible way to proceed.
“I cannot best you with politics, then.” Her fingers slid across the top of her desk. “And I cannot best you with magic.”
He tugged at the chain of what was surely a protection charm hanging beneath his shirt. “You have lost. And I will see to it that you pay the full price of your failure.”
“I’m afraid I cannot let you,” Zerena said.
Her fingers closed around a letter opener’s hilt. And in the span of one exhale, one flare of her nostrils—the dull brass blade slid in between Sasha’s ribs.
He blinked; stared down at the blade as Zerena pulled it back out. “The fuck are you—” Blood slipped off the brass, dripping onto the folder. “You bitch—”
Zerena stabbed him again, this time just beneath the sternum; she twisted the blade with a curl to her lips. Sasha scrambled away from her, backing into the study doors, but Zerena lunged over the desk. All of Tanya’s carefully assembled photographs, ledger replications, and notes went scattering behind her as she thrust the blade into Sasha’s throat.
He had never been in a fight before. That much was apparent to her. He had no instinct to raise his hand to block an incoming blow, no clue how to find her center of gravity or shift his weight to his advantage. Perhaps he was right—she had been a gutter rat, clawing her way to the top with brute strength and raw physicality.
At least she knew how to claw.
Sasha’s mouth flopped open and he tried to utter a spell of power. The light flickered around him and sputtered out as Zerena twisted the blade once more. Hot blood gushed down his throat and into the collar of his dress shirt, and he made a dreadful gurgling noise. His hands thrust forward, flailing helplessly as he tried to seize hold of her hair. But he barely managed to yank at it. He was losing blood too quickly.
Sputter. Eyes rolling back. Legs giving out. Sagging, sinking down.
It always did surprise Zerena how long it took. Just how much effort it took to kill a person. Especially without the assistance of magic. You really had to want it. But Zerena never pursued anything she didn’t crave with every last breath in her lungs.
She pulled the blade from Sasha’s throat as his eyelids closed, then tossed it onto his chest.
There was a thumping noise; at first, she feared it was someone on the other side of the doors, but it was only her own pulse, throbbing in her ears. She sagged against the desk and struggled to catch her breath. Arcs of blood painted the chairs, the desk, the doors—her silk blouse. Her right hand, too, was slick with it. With a bitter laugh, she realized that she had no idea what to do next.
Well. About the blood, the body, the mess, that was. With the Flame—she knew precisely what to do.
And so, spine straight, she knelt down beside Sasha’s body and fished the chain she’d seen out of his shirt. Fumbled with the clasp, then yanked on it until it snapped off his neck. She held the relic up, and let the carved grooves, blood-stained though they were, glint in the overhead light.
She squeezed the relic, let the warmth within it flood through her. She was no mere acolyte.
She was the Flame, and she would make them all burn.
5.
It took Josh three tries to light the cigarette. His fingers trembled, his lips trembled, his whole body trembled. Much as he liked using smoking as a front to conduct surveillance, he stood out more for his nervousness now than for lingering on the corner without good reason. And holy shit, did he not need to stand out.
Fuck. Who knew what magic could do? Could they stop his heart, right here on the street, without even touching him? Look inside his head? Nadia had said there wasn’t a way to control a person with magic, but if they could be subdued, put to sleep, softened, wearied—wasn’t it just a game of degrees?
He looked up again at the block of warehouses, the darkened square in an upper office where curtains covered the window, and wondered who or what might be looking back at him.
But the device Nadia gave him—it suggested Frank was here. There had to be some way. Magic or not—he could solve this with good old-fashioned spycraft.
If he couldn’t believe in that, then what the hell could he still believe in?
Josh gave up on the cigarette and stuffed it back in his shirt pocket, then crossed the street. The neighborhood seemed run-down but quiet, a dangerous combination. Too many desperate people happy to tell what they saw or heard for a wad of cash. Josh ruffled his hair as he crossed the street and changed the set of his jaw to match the neighborhood’s mood: sullen, shifty-eyed, all too eager to get on with whatever needed getting on with. The basement access was easy enough to pry open—flecks of rust coated his hand as he yanked on the lock—and he dropped down in a matter of seconds. Unseen from the street. So he hoped.
He fumbled for his lighter, then thought better of it, and felt his way forward in the dim basement, haltingly, carefully, using the strip of light trickling in from the street and his own shoes to guide his path. Finally he stumbled across a staircase, grasped the rotting wooden railing, and took the first step.
That’s when the sensation started.
At first he thought he was smelling a gas leak—a sharp, tangy stench that went to his brain. Then the stairwell was bending, twisting in on him like he was in a Hitchcockian framing shot, even as he climbed. He had to stop a few steps short of the landing—his feet were too heavy and his head was pounding and his stomach wanted to turn itself inside out. He clutched at the rickety railing and gasped for air.
Either this was magic, or the entire city block was about to go up in a methane gas explosion; Josh couldn’t decide which was worse.
Okay. He just had to think. He could go back to the Vodnář. Maybe Jordan had something to—counter this. If that was a thing that could be done.
He tried to pull him
self to his feet, but the railing snapped loose, and he skidded down several steps before catching himself, flinging both arms out wide to pin himself in place in the narrow stairwell. Josh drew a deep breath until he felt steady once more. Then, on the exhale, he heard the access door groan open beneath him.
Footsteps began up the stairs, and Josh’s heart leapt into his throat. He had nothing to defend himself with.
The figure uttered something, vaguely Latin with an undercurrent of—Romanian? Josh couldn’t be sure. On the final syllable, golden light flooded the stairwell.
Josh threw one arm up over his eyes, as if that could do any good—
But then the nausea retreated, retracting its claws. The darkness lifted, and the room felt—well, maybe not straightened, but not so aggressively warped.
The footsteps turned the corner.
“Josh.”
Josh looked down. Gabe stood below him, his face and golden hair dusty with God knew what, but otherwise whole. Healthy. Free.
“They didn’t let you out, did they.” Josh knew it wasn’t a question even as he asked it.
“Sometimes, there are more important things than following the rules,” Gabe said.
Josh flattened himself against the wall as Gabe climbed the last few steps toward him.
“Frank. He’s here, isn’t he?” Gabe asked. Something about his expression showed him looking inward, as if consulting with forces Josh could only imagine. Josh managed a nod. “And it’s warded?”
“If that’s what you call that—whatever it was. Miasma. Pall.”
Gabe nodded decisively. “You don’t have to help me. It isn’t going to be pretty, this thing. No matter how it goes.”
Interrogations, charges of treason, conspiracy. Josh sensed these weren’t the only things Gabe meant. But if the Flame was capable of what Nadia had claimed—
“It’s the only choice,” Josh said.
Gabe smiled. It was exhausted, barely pushing at the corners of his mouth, but the light it put in his eyes—Josh wasn’t sure he’d ever seen that in Gabe. Not in the entire time they’d known each other. Maybe this was the Gabe from before Cairo shining through at last, the man his records promised existed somewhere under all the grime.
Gabe gestured up the stairs. “Then let’s get to work.”
The Witch Who Came In From the Cold
Season 2, Episode 13
We All Fall Down
Ian Tregillis
Prague, Czechoslovak Soviet Republic
May 2, 1970
1.
The night had fallen extra dark. At sunset, a storm front had scudded across Prague as though the city were a child yanking the covers over her head when the campfire burned out. And, like that child holding her breath lest the beasts of the night hear and devour her, Prague had stilled itself, too.
The rain muffled everything except one steady rhythm, like the pounding of bootheels on wet cobbles. But none who heard the strange rapping—as it neared their khruschyovka windows, then Dopplered away again—imagined this was the sound of a woman in flight. Nobody could run that fast. It was nothing but a dream, they reassured themselves as they drifted back to sleep.
Or so Jordan hoped.
The charm clenched in her fist pulled its energy directly from the quivering ley lines beneath the city. She drew deep from the telluric currents to power her legs, to heighten the efficiency of her lungs, to keep exhaustion at bay. The price would be great. She’d chosen speed over stealth. After all, what point in discretion if there was nobody left to marvel? Still, it made her feel naked: a bald display of the uncanny, free for the lonely insomniacs of Prague.
Wisps of smoke and a bone-white glow leaked through her fingers to render Jordan a comet, tail and all. She’d lost a kerchief somewhere on this mad dash, and now the hair streaming behind her tugged relentlessly, fighting her like a drag racer’s drogue chute. Rainwater had wicked into the hem of her skirt, making it heavier, sapping just a little more energy with every slap against her ankles. She skidded around a corner, hobnails drawing sparks from rain-slicked pavers as she spied her destination. A convulsion rattled the ley lines and broke her connection. It sent her sprawling.
She wrapped her arms about her head, bracing for concussion. The smoking charm flew free of her grasp and crumbled to ash against a traffic bollard. She tumbled down the street, rolling and flopping like a rag doll, every bounce the source of three new bruises. But even that pain was nothing compared to the fiery agony in her lungs.
Somehow, she slid to a stop with no shattered bones. She clutched an iron railing and pulled herself upright, grimacing. A profound weariness, heavier than seven sleepless nights, bowed her shoulders. Rain seeped through the rents in her newly tattered leather jacket.
Climbing the stairs to Nadia’s apartment seemed a Herculean task, but she managed. Half throwing herself against the door, half collapsing against it, she coaxed a semblance of a voice from her wind-burned throat.
“Ostrokhina. Open up.”
She didn’t, at first. Who in her right mind would leap to this summons? Certainly not a KGB officer, nor any loyal Soviet who’d undoubtedly grown up with parents who dreaded, more than anything in the world, a knock on the door in the middle of the night. A knock like Jordan made now: loud, insistent, demanding. Ceaseless.
The door cracked open and one brown eye peeked out. The Russian swore. “What now? I’ve only just—”
“Flame has occupied my bar,” Jordan rasped. “I’m locked out.”
The door flew open, pulling Jordan off balance. She crashed to the floor at Nadia’s feet. New bruises joined those from the street. A matching set, perhaps. The KGB woman briskly lifted her like a bartender righting an overturned stool. Jordan had rarely seen somebody turn so angry so quickly.
“Are you telling me they own the confluence?”
Jordan nodded. “And they’re wasting no time. Whatever they’re doing, it’s big.”
“We’re not ready yet. Damn it!”
Nadia dashed to the bedroom and fell to a crouch beside a tall armoire. Jordan felt a little fizz of magic as the other woman breathed a short chant and snapped something against the lock of the lowest drawer. Subtle pressure, like the ache of an ear that refuses to pop, percolated through Jordan’s sinuses, made her eyes water. Nadia had dropped a heavy shielding ward. Jordan kept similar protections around her own “in case of emergency” stash.
Of course, Jordan’s emergency stash was in the bar.
“I won’t ask how you knew where to find me,” said the Russian, rummaging in the drawer. She tossed something at Jordan, who managed to pluck it from midair without bobbling it. An electric buzz ran down her arm, partially recharging overtaxed muscles—both physical and metaphysical—and saving her from the worst of the adrenaline crash. It made her alert enough to note her surroundings more clearly. One side of the bed was completely untouched.
That was disappointing. She’d harbored a faint hope she might recruit a second reinforcement with this errand.
“Where’s your girlfriend?” she asked.
Nadia kept sorting through her charms. One for her, one for Jordan, one for her, one for Jordan. She didn’t miss a beat. “Not here.”
She probably thought her tone neutral. But any barkeep worth her salt understood that tightening in the voice. It was the crackle of a breaking heart.
“I’m sorry to hear it. But we need her, and we need her now.”
Nadia hesitated, chewing her lip as if sliding into reverie.
Jordan snapped her fingers. “Listen to me. Half an hour ago, Terzian and his followers chased me out of Bar Vodnář. He now has unrestricted access to my special inventory and the nexus.”
That got through. Nadia slammed the drawer shut, leapt from her crouch straight to her feet.
“I’ll find Van. Get back to the bar and keep an eye open for Tanya. Don’t let her kill herself.”
• • •
Frank’s arms and shoulders were su
rely screaming, Gabe thought, from the hours he’d spent on the floor with wrists handcuffed around the steel pole behind his back, the shackle on his ankle binding him via a taut chain to the loading dock door. A forklift idled in the corner, spewing diesel exhaust into the stuffy warehouse, one of its blades pointed straight at Frank’s chest, where a charm pendant glowed a faint piss-yellow.
The hitchhiker did not like that charm. Gabe looked away before he started bleeding from the eyes.
Josh carefully stepped atop a wooden crate, then to a drum. Standing on his toes, he peered at the vehicle’s controls.
“Yep. More trip wires,” he said. “Ignition and clutch.”
The chief of CIA Prague Station was tangled at the center of a sadistic web. Tamper with the forklift ignition, and the trip wire would detonate the land mine nestled between Frank and the steel pole (possibly bringing the warehouse down on their heads for good measure). Try to disarm the charge, and the loading dock door would roll up, tearing Frank’s leg off. Try to unchain his ankle or fiddle with the door controls, and the forklift would shift into gear and impale him.
See, Josh? This is why I begged you not to involve Frank. “Sir, I think your pal Cartwright isn’t on the up-and-up.”
Frank started to nod, but winced. “On the weight of the evidence, I concur.”
For a moment, Gabe could only see his hands covered in dark blood while a body—a colleague’s body, a friend’s body—lay sprawled on the street beside him. The vision left the taste of ashes in his mouth. Instantly, deeply, he regretted the attempt at being flip. He felt like a heartless reptile. “That son of a bitch killed Edith.”
Frank closed his eyes. Tipped his head back against the pole. His voice was the slam of a sepulcher door: “Yes.”
“She was …” Words failed Gabe. “… Really good. I respected her.”
“Yeah,” said Josh. “Me, too.”
He rejoined Gabe, giving the wires a wide berth as he did so. Gabe pulled out his pocketknife and unfolded the blade, more for something to do than out of a clear idea how to proceed. He must have looked eager to dive in, though, because Josh laid a hand on Gabe’s elbow.
The Witch Who Came In From The Cold: The Complete Season 2: The Complete Season 2 (The Witch Who Came In From The Cold Season 2) Page 46